A startling article entitled Inside The National Debt Control Room (An Exclusive Look At How The Government Manages A Crushing $9 Trillion In Debt) from CBS News’ Life & Debt in America series serves as a stark reminder on just how much the United States is dependent on outside money to run its government. Before the end of the year, the United States will owe other nations a stagerring $10 Trillion (see U.S. National Debt Clock for current count). To cite CBS’s article: “Last year alone, the United States spent $430 billion just on interest payments - that’s nearly as much as we spent on education.”. That’s $430 billion with a “b” just for interest payments not including the reimbursement of the principal on these loans. And the Economist recently evaluated the United States Debt at nearly $30 Trillion when you count all the individual States’ debt and more. The number grows into a much scarier figure in a USA Today’s Rules ‘hiding’ trillions in debt article.

When I read this article I was reminded about other serious financial problems facing Americans. Social Security is running out of money as more and more baby boomers retire. To quote from my book:

“According to the Social Security Administration itself, by 2018 it will begin paying more benefits than it will collect in payroll taxes. Without changes to the current system, by 2041 the Social Security trust will be exhausted. One word: S-C-A-R-Y. At that point, there will be enough money to pay only about 74 cents for each dollar of scheduled benefits. The expected shortfall is estimated at about $3.7 trillion. What’s worse is Medicare’s huge deficit which is twice as large as Social Security’s. The only way the government will be able to remedy the situation is by increasing taxes, reducing benefits, increasing the retirement age, or any combination thereof.”

And here are a few more links from my book on Social Security’s woes should you want to investigate the problem further:

- U.S. Government Accountability Office – Fiscal Wake-up Tour
- CBS 60 Minutes article and video – U.S. heading for Financial Trouble?

As an American citizen, this worries me tremendously. It makes me wonder what congress is doing to address these extremely serious financial situations so that our children and grandchildren will not pay for all this mess. Maybe they are too busy sweeping it under the rug.

What are your thoughts?